Catecholamine compositions, such as epinephrine, are useful for various pharmaceutical purposes. As many types of organic compositions, catecholamines are sensitive to oxidation, and thus must be protected from oxidation in order to prolong shelf life and to prevent conversion to derivatives which are not as pharmaceutically effective and/or which may be harmful to the user. Oxidation of catecholamine can result in loss of titer of the active ingredient, formation of compounds which may have undesirable physiological effect and appearance of a dark color, which often makes the composition undesirable and unmarketable.
Many pharmaceutical compositions, including catecholamine compositions, have heretofore contained sulfites to stabilize the compositions from oxidation. However, use of sulfites has been found to be harmful and therefore there is a need to find methods for stabilizing catecholamines for their various physiological uses without the use of sulfites.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,966,905 discloses particular catecholamine solutions containing polyvinylpyrrolidone.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,091,569 discloses a mucolytic process comprising contacting a mucous with a certain class of N-acylated sulfhydrl compounds.
It is thus an object of the present invention to provide novel catecholamine-containing compositions which are sulfite-free.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide novel catecholamine solutions which are stabilized from oxidation and suitable for inhalation.
These and other objects will become apparent from the following description of the present invention to those of ordinary skill in the art.